Les réalités contre l'idéologie. Classes et nations dans l'Europe socialiste

Reality versus ideology H. Carrère d'Encausse The history of the twentieth century has been marked by the disintegration of multinational empires, the collapse of colonial empires and the setting up, in Europe and outside it, of national sovereign states. But in Russia the evolution is inverted. Born of the internationalist ideology of Marx, who defended the right of nations to dispose of themselves, this state has reconstituted under the banner of socialism the old Russian Empire and then unified Eastern Europe under its authority. In principle this unification was realised in the naine of the unity of the working classes, of their common community, their class, which was said to transcend national communities. The facts have however shown the difficulties ideology meets with when it is projected, into a precise framework, when it becomes institutionalized. Everywhere, in Russia as in the rest of Socialist Europe, national interests have tended to dominate class interests, questioning thus the validity of the ideology. If Russia faced with the difficulties born of the confrontation of theory and practice, continues to assert its belief in an unchanged theory, to which it tries to bend the facts, other communist countries such as Rumania, found on reality a new theory — in which national identity is the foundation of the relationship between socialist countries and of a new internationalism

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